Mediterranean Crime Fiction
Transcultural Narratives in and around the ‘Great Sea'

By exploring the transcultural nature of Mediterranean crime fiction, Barbara Pezzotti advocates for a regional 'reading' of the genre.

Barbara Pezzotti (Author)

9781009451475, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 November 2023

240 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 1.8 cm, 0.53 kg

'A brilliantly imagined and wonderfully written examination of what makes the “Mediterranean” in Mediterranean crime fiction – its heady mix of identities, cultures, and histories that transports us from Marseilles to Tel Aviv, Istanbul to Algiers – and a landmark work of crime fiction criticism that unpicks the familiar assumptions of both nation and globe.' Andrew Pepper, Professor of English, Queen's University Belfast

Contributing to the growing debate around the definition of Mediterranean noir, Barbara Pezzotti's groundbreaking study is the first in English to propose a rigorous classification of Mediterranean crime fiction. Intersecting crime fiction studies and Mediterranean studies, this interdisciplinary book provides a coherent and stringent definition in which the Mediterranean setting is not in the background, but is a meaningful arena where transnational space, globalisation and environmental issues are discussed; questions of regional, national and transcultural identity are investigated; and the themes of gender and violence are tackled. Pezzotti offers new ways of reading established crime novelists, such as Andrea Camilleri, Jean-Claude Izzo and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, alongside less well-known writers. To date, no other book-length study has taken a transnational and transcultural approach to these authors, and here Pezzotti invites us to consider the wider Mediterranean dimensions of their crime narratives, beyond their national contexts.

List of figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Mediterranean detective
2. A place in the sun?
3. Food for thought in Mediterranean crime fiction
4. Crime fiction and the past: a Mediterranean Desencanto
5. Identity in Mediterranean crime fiction
6. Male gaze and gender violence in the Mediterranean crime novel
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]